IFPI's Annual Attack On Piracy Once Again Riddled With Errors And Bogus Claims

from the midemeve dept

Every year, on the eve of the Midem music industry event in France, the IFPI puts out its report about how "piracy" is destroying the music industry. It's well-timed, because it then gets quoted repeatedly in Midem discussions, and gets lots of press and stuff. This year, is no different, though amusingly, the IFPI tries to pre-empt the usual criticism by insisting the troubles facing the recording industry have nothing to do with its unwillingness to try new business models. It's also wrong. Blatantly, incredibly, wrong. As has been detailed by many, many, many other studies, the only part of the industry that's really been suffering is the recording industry. Of course, the key point -- which is the same as it is every year -- is the IFPI begging the government to come save its business by blocking competition, criminalizing technology, and making everyone else responsible for propping up the record labels. Sorry, but the world doesn't work that way. Not surprisingly, the IFPI's report is also filled with all sorts of factual errors, such as relying on the debunked report whose methodology was so bad that it thought that only a few 2010 movies were the most downloaded of 2010, with much older movies dominating the list.

The real problem with the report -- beyond the flat-out errors -- is the fact that it's so focused on music sales and music sales alone as the be-all, end-all of the music industry that it simply ignores everything else:

Fewer new artists are breaking through globally. Total sales by debut artists in the global top 50 album chart in 2010 were just one quarter of the level they achieved in 2003

Traditionally vibrant music local industries, such as Spain and Mexico, are especially hard hit. In Spain, where music sales fell by an estimated 22 per cent in 2010, no new home-grown artist featured in the country's top 50 album chart, compared with 10 in 2003

Note the implicit assumption here. Because there are fewer music sales, it means that such new music is not being created, or those artists are not successful. This is like saying that "because fewer horse carriages were sold this year, it shows the automobile is not a legitimate savior of the transportation industry." You see how that's done? If you define success based on the obsolete way of doing things, of course it's going to look bad. But if you look at the actual numbers, and the actual opportunities, you realize that the market is actually growing.

IFPI boss Frances Moore apparently claimed that this is "a crisis affecting not just an industry - but artists, musicians, jobs, consumers, and the wider creative sector." Except that's not true. There are more people making music today than ever before. It's cheaper than ever before to make, distribute and promote music. If you're a musician, there are more ways than ever before to build a fanbase and to build a business model to make a living. It's a great time to be a musician. It's also a fantastic time to be a consumer. It's hard to see how Moore can make such a claim that is obviously false, and no one calls her on the obviously false nature of her claims. When Moore took over last year for John Kennedy, I had hoped that maybe she'd bring some sense to the IFPI. Instead, she seems to be spreading the same propaganda as her predecessor.

Filed Under: piracy, studies
Companies: ifpi

Why Won't Copyright Holders Run Studies On The Actual Impact Of Piracy?

from the wouldn't-they-want-to-know dept

A bunch of folks have sent in this recent O'Reilly Radar interview with Brian O'Leary, concerning the data on the impact of ebook "piracy," with many pointing to the following quote:

Data that we collected for the titles O'Reilly put out showed a net lift in sales for books that had been pirated. So, it actually spurred, not hurt, sales.

Of course, if you read the details, he's actually saying this is from a study from a couple years ago, and the focus of his point is that there really isn't enough data to say yet. He's hoping that other publishers will work with him to do more research on this subject, but so far, they haven't.

O'Leary, correctly, points out that there are lot of factors involved and it would be nice to have more data to look at the actual impact. But what really struck me is that line about how publishers simply aren't willing to collect the data and study the actual impact of unauthorized copies. I'm trying to figure out why this is. There are so many copyright holders who whine and complain about the impact of unauthorized copies, that you would think they would be all over the idea of working with some researchers to figure out the actual impact (good or bad), so that they can respond accordingly. That they refuse to do so seems oddly telling. It's as if they don't want to know. I can only speculate as to why, but as a guess, I would imagine that some firms are afraid of finding out that the impact isn't as bad as they think (or, as O'Reilly discovered, that it's positive on sales, rather than negative), and suddenly they've lost their "bogeyman" that they've been able to blame poor sales on.

Filed Under: ebooks, piracy, stats, studies
Companies: o'reilly

Highly Flawed 'Piracy' Report Used To Support Positions That Are Unrelated

from the just-saying... dept

Last year, we pointed out that Steven Tepp, who worked at the US Copyright Office at the time, and was heavily involved in pushing for ACTA (and downplaying the legitimate concerns of ACTA critics), jumped ship to the private US Chamber of Commerce, which has been one of the stronger supporters of such bad laws. The Chamber of Commerce, which is basically a lobbying organization for some of the world's biggest businesses, has a history of making up absolutely ridiculous claims about intellectual property, so it's really not a surprise that it would hire Tepp, who did the same thing from within the government.

However, when Tepp speaks out in support of greater protectionism, especially based on a complete lack of evidence, shouldn't the press point out that he was heavily involved in the crafting of some of the legislation he's now supporting from the "outside"? For example, Hillicon Valley has an article about a silly new study from MarkMonitor, which notes the unsurprising fact that, gosh darnit, there are a lot of sites out there that offer infringing products. Big shock. But the article then quotes Tepp saying:

"Online counterfeiting and piracy is a destructive force that threatens consumers, hurts our businesses, and costs American jobs."

That's a sort of go to line that we hear all the time. Funny thing is, no one supports it with any actual evidence. It's purely faith-based. What's the neat trick that Tepp pulls is he says this in commenting on a report that sounds like it's presenting evidence to back up his claims. It is not. The report says that there are lots of sites out there offering pirated or counterfeit content. That's different than proving that those sites are "destructive" or harm consumers or businesses. In fact, over and over again, when you have independent research that looks at those actual questions, you discover that the actual impact of such activities is significantly less than industry lobbyists would have you believe.

So rather than just letting someone like Tepp, who is inherently biased, comment on a report that does not make the claims he says it makes, why not speak to folks who might question some of the claims from the report... or at least note that Tepp is hardly an impartial observer here, but someone who is paid to pretend that the impact of copyright and trademark infringement is significantly worse than any of the evidence actually suggests?

As for the actual report that Tepp was commenting on, it doesn't actually say what Tepp says it says. You can read the details of the report (pdf) here. It's almost laughably weak in its methodology. Nowhere does it support any of Tepp's claims -- and you would think that a journalist wouldn't quote a biased commenter making claims that have nothing to do with the report in question. Specifically, the MarkMonitor report simply looked at some sites that are used for infringement, then assumed that they were used entirely for infringing purposes, and then used Alexa ratings (perhaps the least credible measuring system out there) and simply added up all visits, and seemed to suggest that this was all for infringement. When it came to pharmaceuticals, the researchers did not appear to make much of an attempt to determine which offerings were really gray market importers of generic drugs, as opposed to counterfeits. Instead, it just made some assumptions based on the sites themselves.

So basically, all the report actually shows is that, according to Alexa (again, not considered to be even remotely accurate), some sites that may have some infringing downloads or may sell some unauthorized products get a lot of traffic. Like that's a surprise. And yet, that leads to a quote from a biased ex-government official, now paid to hype up the "threat" of infringement, as if this study proves we need the new laws he was a part of writing? How is that responsible journalism?

Filed Under: piracy, steven tepp, studies
Companies: mark monitor, us chamber of commerce

The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong

from the the-hall-of-shame dept

Nate Silver, who, before he became famous as a political data analyzer on his FiveThirtyEight website (now hosted by the NY Times), was famous to a much smaller group of folks for his similar data analysis of baseball data at Baseball Prospectus. Every so often, he jumps back to baseball analysis, such as with his recent effort to question some of the common wisdom concerning the Baseball Hall of Fame. There's a common complaint among fans and some in the press that the Hall of Fame has become "watered down" in some way, and that they're letting in players who really shouldn't qualify. The comment that is repeated way too frequently is "It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Very Good." However, Silver breaks down the actual data, and notes that percentage-wise significantly fewer players are getting into the Hall of Fame today than in the past. He shows the following chart to help prove the point: As he notes, the point is not to say that one period is correct, and the other is not, but simply to challenge the suggestion that admission to the Hall of Fame has become much easier today. And, yes, he also discusses some of the obvious counterpoints -- such as the fact that, thanks to expansion, there are now more players -- and why there are other equalizing forces (the internationalization of the game, for example).

It's an interesting article if you're interested in that kind of thing. But, what's most entertaining is that a large number of the comments on the story seem to simply refuse to accept what the data says. They don't refute the data. They don't suggest explanations that would explain the data. They flat-out ignore it and insist that the Hall of Fame has been watered down these days. I noticed this thanks to King Kaufman who aggregated some of the sillier comments. Here are a few:

• "Too stringent"? Au contraire. Over the last couple of decades they have admitted so many bums that it defies description. If anything, the standards should be tightened. There are perhaps six active players who should EVER be considered.
• We've dumbed down America and now you want to water down what makes a true athlete great. They should measure up or not be considered!!!! That's the problem with America continually relaxing standards and codes.!!!!
• The statistical look at the question is entirely misdirected. There have been a handful of standout players in the game, something less than 50 in total.
• i thought the hall was for extraordinary accomplishments not just very good ...the hall is so diluted these days.

There are probably some decent explanations for these kinds of mass delusions. I would guess that people who either never actually saw some of the Hall of Fame players from an earlier generation, or saw them so long ago and are overcome with nostalgia, are dealing with a bit of confirmation bias -- where they only remember (or know about) the highlights, and ignore the rest. With more recent players, they've probably seen them a lot more, or remember things a lot more clearly, and thus the "great" feats are diluted in their heads by the fact that they weren't preternaturally good (but, no one is).

That said, we often see this sort of thing around here. I've presented numerous studies concerning certain areas of interest, and almost immediately we get comments that don't try to rebut the data, or point to errors in the studies (and there may very well be errors or confounding factors), but to simply insist that what they've always believed simply must be true. It seems like a form of cognitive dissonance on display in ways that are both troubling and amusing. It's the basis of what I call "faith-based" decision making, where actual data is simply ignored for what "must be" true.

Filed Under: baseball, data, hall of fame, studies

Journalists Continue To Rely On Bogus Research About File Sharing As If It Were Factual

from the sad dept

Over the summer, we had pointed out how disappointing it was that the press relied on an obviously bogus research report from the University of Ballarat's Internet Commerce Security Laboratory, about how much infringing content was being shared on BitTorrent. As we noted at the time, the folks over at TorrentFreak carefully picked apart the study and showed how it appeared to have been done by folks who didn't actually understand how BitTorrent and torrent trackers worked. Apparently, the TorrentFreak guys sent a note to the authors offering to help them fix the problems in their study methodology, and all they got back was a sarcastic email from one of the researchers saying that he'd gladly send the Torrentfreak guys a complimentary copy of O'Reilly's Statistics in a Nutshell, as it "might give further insight into statistical methodology." Snarky!

Apparently, the researchers didn't do much to fix their methodology, as they're out with another report, which -- yet again -- the press appears to be quoting without question, even with some serious red flags -- such as listing only four movies from 2010 as being among the most downloaded in 2010. Once again, TorrentFreak comes to the rescue and details the flaws in the study's methodology. Of course, seeing as the report was funded in part by a movie studio and IBM, perhaps the researchers aren't so concerned about getting it right as they are about getting what the funders' wanted.

Filed Under: bittorrent, file sharing, journalism, studies, university of ballarat

81% Of Americans Support Naked Airport Scans... If You Leave Out The Naked Part In Asking The Question

from the fun-with-stats dept

With all the stories of people who don't want to be groped or seen naked just to travel by airplane these days, the TSA must be thrilled with a new poll that was put out by CBS that's getting lots of press claiming that 81% of Americans support such full-body scans. Thus we get titles about how Americans "overwhelmingly" are in favor of such scans.

Of course, as with any poll, the devil is in the details, and specifically in how the questions are asked. As Tim Lee properly notes, the poll question does not mention the whole naked bit or anything relaying the concerns of those protesting the machines. The actual question asked read as follows:

Some airports are now using "full-body" digital x-ray machines to electronically screen passengers in airport security lines. Do you think these new x-ray machines should or should not be used at airports?

Note that there's nothing about how someone will see you naked. Note that there's nothing about the health concerns some have raised (which, frankly, are probably blown out of proportion). Note that there's nothing about the compulsory genital groping should you refuse to be seen naked. Most people don't follow these issues, and without knowing the details, when you present the question as it's been presented in this poll, it should come as little surprise that most people agreed. Try asking the same people whether or not they approve of being scanned by a machine that presents TSA screeners a naked image of their body, and see what the results would be then.

Filed Under: polls, scans, studies, tsa

Electrical Shocks To Your Head Can Improve Your Math Skills?

from the sign-me-up dept

Not quite sure what to make of this one, but some new research is suggesting that electrical current applied to your head in a certain manner can improve math skills for up to 6 months. The study also found that changing the flow of the current can actually harm math skills in a similar manner. It sounds like the research is still pretty early, but various researchers are apparently getting pretty excited about being able to "stimulate" brain activity in various ways with electrical currents. Does this mean that we're now going to start reading about electrical "doping" scandals at the next mathletes contests?

Filed Under: electrical shocks, math skills, studies

Telltale Signs A CEO Is Lying (Or Not)

from the moving-his-lips? dept

NPR has a story about a study that tried to figure out indicators that a CEO is lying. The researchers went through the statements made by executives on earnings calls for companies that later had to restate earnings, and found a few key signals that indicate lies. The researcher's own summary:

We find that answers of deceptive executives have more references to general knowledge, fewer non-extreme positive emotions, and fewer references to shareholders value and value creation. In addition, deceptive CEOs use significantly fewer self- references, more third person plural and impersonal pronouns, more extreme positive emotions, fewer extreme negative emotions, and fewer certainty and hesitation words.

Honestly though, reading through this, it seems pretty difficult to use this to really come to any serious conclusions. For example, one of the indicators is that:

lying executives tend to overuse words like "we" and "our team" when they talk about their company. They avoid saying "I."

The argument is that the CEO doing so is trying to avoid responsibility for the statement, but couldn't it also be that they actually appreciate the work of the team around them? My initial reaction to a CEO who uses "I" repeatedly is that he or she is hogging the credit and not a good leader.

That said, some of the other parts do make sense, such as answering a different question than the one asked. There was an example given of that:

For instance, in 2002 NPR interviewed Computer Associates CEO Sanjay Kumar, who later went to prison for securities fraud, about his company's auditing practices.

Here's what he said: "There's no one out there today in the world of public companies who has the former chief accountant for the SEC running their audit committee. We do. There's no one out there who has the pre-eminent governance leader, professor [Jay] Lorsch, for example, running their governance committee. We do."

In other words, Kumar was asked, "Can your books be trusted?" And he replied by saying, "We hire the very best auditors." Larcker says that can be a big warning sign.

Finally, the things to worry about are CEOs who use extremely positive wording on things:

"If all my speech is 'fantastic,' 'superb,' 'outstanding,' 'excellent' and all my speech sounds like a big hype -- it probably is," Larcker says.

Of course, if that's true, then Steve Jobs is the worst of the worst of the worst when it comes to lying CEOs. As an example, in the period of about thirty seconds during the iPad launch, he used the words "extraordinary... the best experience ever... it's phenomenal... it's unbelievably great... way better..." etc. Which I think sort of points out why this kind of research, by itself, is pretty tough to be used to indicate anything.

Filed Under: ceos, lying, studies

Perhaps Avoiding Links Is Really A Way To Get People Not To Read The Details Of The Studies You're Misrepresenting

from the link-link-away dept

Earlier this year, as part of a discussion about Nick Carr's most recent book we pointed to some reports that noted Carr appeared to misrepresent the scientific research to support his point. It appears that others are finding more examples of this as well. There was a little web-hubbub that I ignored earlier this year when Carr declared that links in documents were bad, and he was shifting all his links to the end. This was apparently based on some research, Carr claimed, that showed links in text are really distracting. Personally, I found that premise to be laughable, as I think after my second week online I stopped being distracted by links and quickly learned to use them effectively.

Still, without having a chance to dig into the research, I didn't have much to say on the subject. However, Scott Rosenberg is digging in and finding that, once again, it appears that Carr is conveniently misrepresenting the studies he relies on to support his anti-link thesis. The problem is that the study seems to show that poorly used and explained links distract people, but that hardly condemns all in-text links. Basically, the key study involved two groups looking at a piece of text, one that had a "next" link at the bottom, and the other that had three "links" randomly inserted into the text, with each of those three links doing the same thing as the "next" button (and there was no "back" button). In other words, as Rosenberg notes:

What the researchers did was to muck up a perfectly good story with meaningless links. Of course the readers of this version had a rougher time than the control group, who got to read a much more sensibly organized version. All this study proved was something we already knew: that badly executed hypertext can indeed ruin the process of reading. So, of course, can badly executed narrative structure, or grammar, or punctuation.

In fact, Rosenberg notes, another study that Carr looked at also focused on "next" links, rather than how actual linking tends to work online. I'm sure that Carr really believes in his thesis, but it seems quite problematic that when anyone looks at the evidence he relies on, it doesn't seem to say what he claims it says. In the meantime, I'm guessing that many people's feeling towards links reflects Rosenberg's statement:

Maybe in the early days of the Web, when they were newfangled, people felt compelled to click -- like primitives suddenly encountering TV and jabbing their fingers at the channel selector, wondering what will magically appear next.

I think we all passed through that phase quickly. If your experience matches mine, then today, your eyes pass over a link. Most often you ignore it. Sometimes, you hover your mouse pointer to see where it goes. Every now and then, you click the link open in a new tab to read when you're done. And very rarely, you might actually stop what you're reading and read the linked text. If you do, it's usually a sign that you've lost interest in the original article anyway. Which can happen just as easily in a magazine or newspaper -- where, instead of clicking a link, we just turn the page.

Filed Under: linking, nick carr, scott rosenberg, studies

Study About IP On The Human Genome Shows That Patents Hindered Innovation

from the another-one-to-add-to-the-pile dept

David Levine points us to the abstract of a recent study of the human genome, which shows how the parts protected by intellectual property resulted in a significant decrease in both scientific research and product development. This won't come as a surprise to those of you who have been following the research on patents over the years, but it's another bit of evidence to add to the (growing) pile. In this case, the researcher, Heidi L. Williams, had an interesting "natural experiment" to deal with. The race to sequence the human genome had two main players, the public Human Genome Project and the private company Celera -- a massive supporter of patent rights. The paper notes that Celera got IP on genes it first sequenced, but that IP protection was "removed when the public effort re-sequenced those genes." I have to admit I didn't know that was the case, and don't quite understand how or why that happened. Nevertheless, it created a natural set of data worth studying, and Williams conclusions suggest that IP doesn't seem to promote the same kind of progress as opening up the data does.

This paper provides empirical evidence on how intellectual property (IP) on a given technology affects subsequent innovation. To shed light on this question, I analyze the sequencing of the human genome by the public Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera, and estimate the impact of Celera's gene-level IP on subsequent scientific research and product development outcomes. Celera's IP applied to genes sequenced first by Celera, and was removed when the public effort re-sequenced those genes. I test whether genes that ever had Celera's IP differ in subsequent innovation, as of 2009, from genes sequenced by the public effort over the same time period, a comparison group that appears balanced on ex ante gene-level observables. A complementary panel analysis traces the effects of removal of Celera's IP on within-gene flow measures of subsequent innovation. Both analyses suggest Celera's IP led to reductions in subsequent scientific research and product development outcomes on the order of 30 percent. Celera's short-term IP thus appears to have had persistent negative effects on subsequent innovation relative to a counterfactual of Celera genes having always been in the public domain.

Levine laments that the NBER version of the paper he links to is not available for free, but a quick Google search turns up a few publicly available versions of the paper (though, they appear to be earlier drafts) such as this one (pdf)). There's also the following powerpoint presentation (pdf) embedded below, which highlights the key findings and data from Williams' research: The key slide is the fourth one, which reads as follows:

Celera IP on genes has strong negative impact on future research and product development

• 35% fewer publications since 2001
• 16% points reduction in chance of gene having known uncertain genotype-phenotype link
• 2% points reduction in chance of gene having known and certain genotype-phenotype link
• 1.5% points less likely to be used in genetic tests

Also, Celera genes have not "caught up" with ex-ante similar genes sequenced by HGP as of 2009

Now, it's important to note that both the paper and the slide presentation note that you can't necessarily conclude from this paper that IP slowed down the overall human genome sequencing efforts. It notes, for example, that the presence of Celera in the market, getting IP, may have created competitive pressure that sped up the Human Genome Project's effort to sequence. However, it does note that given the competition between Celera and the Human Genome Project, it seems clear that Celera's use of IP was clearly not the best way to create the greatest level of social benefit.

While the paper doesn't delve into it, this is really another way of pointing to the difference between invention and innovation as a process. Innovation tends to be an ongoing process of continual improvements. And that's where IP almost always seems to hinder activities, rather than help it. That's because IP puts a giant brake or tollbooth into the process of all of that important follow on innovation. There may be some argument that IP can help in one-off situations where there is no ongoing innovation, but those situations are excessively rare in the real world, if they exist at all.

Filed Under: human genome, innovation, patents, studies
Companies: celera